


A Matching Pair

by accol



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (a little), Anchors, Angst with a Happy Ending, Derek is Stiles's Anchor, Laura Hale Feels, M/M, Near Future, Sharing Clothes, Stiles is Derek's Anchor, Stilinski Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 12:11:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accol/pseuds/accol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles finds a box of things that Derek left behind at the loft.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Matching Pair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lsdme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lsdme/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [A Matching Pair](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7348720) by [rootofallevil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rootofallevil/pseuds/rootofallevil)



> Happy Birthday, lsdme!

"Miguel," Stiles mumbled somewhere between wistful and proud of himself for that spectacular little thought-bubble.  Saved the day with double-special bonus ogling.  

But that was a year ago.  Now Stiles was pushing aside Derek’s black tennis shoes from the top of the pile and rummaging through the rest of the last box.  It was mostly full of newspaper clippings about Laura’s death, and it hurt to imagine Derek stooped over these trying to make sense out of something so completely horrible.  It made him try really freaking hard not to think about what he’d do if, after Mom, something happened to… 

Stiles kept digging through the detritus of Derek’s life until he found his own striped shirt at the bottom of the stack, folded neatly.

He shoved the newspaper and the shoes back on top.  Why Stiles _in particular_ had been sent over here to go through the torture of cleaning out Derek’s abandoned apartment made him suddenly and acidicly angry.  Derek left all this stuff behind like bad memories.  

All Stiles got was a nonstop stream of supernatural crap flowing into his hometown and this box that reminded him about how people always leave.

Half of the box spilled when Stiles threw it into the back of the Jeep with extreme prejudice.  The other half spilled over the back counter at the vet when he left it there, like it wasn’t eating at him.

****

Isaac went up on alert in the locker room.

Stiles slapped his thighs.  ”What is it boy?  Is Martha in the well?  Is the barn on fire?”  He reached into his locker for his lacrosse stick.  Nothing like poking at a werewolf for a little fun and rollicking action.

Isaac’s eyes barely flashed, that’s how not annoying Stiles was after this long as more-or-less packmates.  Isaac was never as fun with the poking as Derek had been.

"It smells like… Derek."  Isaac tilted his nose upward and inhaled.  "Your locker."

He elbowed Stiles out of the way and yanked out Stiles’ gym bag.  One of Derek’s shoes tumbled onto the floor between them.

Isaac’s left eyebrow went up at the same time Stiles’ hands did.  It wasn’t even worth it to try to explain how he’d shoveled everything from the back of Roscoe into his bag, assuming it was all practice gear and not residual bad feelings in tennis shoe form.

****

The shirt and the shoes got shoved far, far under Stiles’ bed.  

It took him 11 days to realize that the Nematon-gifted bad dreams stopped as a result.  

****

"Aren’t those—"  Scott gestured at Stiles’ black-shoe-encased feet with a worried look on his face.

"Not anymore," Stiles said but, yeah, they were.  Still.  Because it helped.

****

It took Stiles another two weeks to realize that maybe this was what having an anchor was all about.  

****

Seemed cosmically appropriate that Stiles would be having lunch with Danny — heads down over his laptop to look up the most recent baddie to float, slither, or creep into Beacon Hills — when Derek showed back up.  

Stiles was so surprised that it didn’t occur to him until he was staring at his bedroom ceiling, wide awake and mind racing at 4am, that maybe not everyone leaves forever. 

****

"Of course you would be," Stiles’ mouth said before his brain could catch up.

Derek dropped down from the pull-up bar (pleasantly shirtless) and walked over (glistening) to where Stiles had frozen near the apartment’s door (probably drooling).  Ogling truly never gets old.

"Of course I would be what?"

_Smoking hot.  Back for more.  My anchor._

"Totally and obviously ready to eat this pizza and do some good ol’ research."  

Stiles toed off his shoes.

****

He woke up with his face stuck to Derek’s couch.  

"I couldn’t sleep much," Derek said quietly from the adjacent chair.

"Huh."

"When I was gone."

Stiles pushed himself to sitting and rubbed his eyes.  ”Ok.”

"I left too much behind."

Wide awake was a woefully insufficient descriptor for Stiles in that moment.  More like Rocket Man levels of adrenaline.  Electricity zapping from the roots of his hair and under his fingernails.  

“‘s that right?”

Derek nodded.  ”It’s better now.”

Stiles nodded back like he had turned into a life-sized bobblehead.  ”Just wait til you try wearing my clothes,” he blurted with a panicked smile.

Derek smiled back.  It was painfully bright and beautiful.  ”Let’s start with your shirt.”

"What.  Now?"

A shrug preceded Derek’s “sure, why not?”

Stiles scrambled out of his shirt and flung it at Derek.  It was spazzy and dumb and he probably looked like the least appealing person on the face of the earth.  

"Maybe your belt."

If it was possible for a teenager to have a stroke and die from horniness, Stiles was sure he was about to be the poster child for sex-induced early death.  He tried really hard not to fling the rest of his clothes as he took them off.

****

When Stiles woke up to the smell of breakfast, Derek had on the striped shirt.

…and nothing else.

Stiles turned face down into his pillow and laughed for the first time in a year.


End file.
